A Thing of the Past
by ohmytheon
Summary: All Jyn can think is this: I had a date. World War II is over and her past is long since dead - or so she thought. (The Captain America/Winter Soldier AU I had no idea that I'd write, but here we are.)
1. Late

**Author's Notes:** I cannot believe that I haven't uploaded this fic on here yet. It's quite possibly my favorite Rebelcaptain AU that I've written - and I've written a ton, just haven't gotten around to posting them on here yet since most of them were smaller one-shots. This one got way out of hand and I have had such a blast writing it. Why not combine two things I love so very much and break my heart? This starts out small, but the chapters get a lot more...extensive afterwards. Remember, this was supposed to be a one-shot - a three sentence one-shot, actually. Oops.

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither Star Wars or Captain America. I would make them just as sad though.

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 _late: adj.,_ _doing something or taking place after the expected, proper, or usual time_

* * *

Jyn has never cared about being late or on time to things in her entire life, but the moment she wakes up and finds herself sixty years in the future and realizes what has happened, the first thing that pops into her shell-shocked head is, _I had a date._

One might say that her entire life revolved around being late – a late bloomer in looks, late getting into the war, late into finding love, late in saving the life of one of her closest friends, late late late – but it's that simple, little thought that cuts into her soul and causes her to stop running. People are shouting at her, others are giving her confused looks, and all she can think about is that date.

He was going to teach her how to dance. She was going to let him hold her like she'd desperately and furiously wanted him to for so long. She was going to let him guide her on the floor as he had helped guide her in war. They were going to become partners in true.

 _"It's a date,"_ Jyn said through gritted teeth over the comm as she began to force the plane down.

 _"Jyn, I–"_ His voice was torn and she couldn't take it. There were a thousand and one things that he wanted to say to her, that she wanted to say to him, and only a few more seconds to get them all out in the air. It wasn't enough. It was never enough. It was too late.

 _"And don't be late,"_ she cut him off. _"I'm not one for waiting."_

She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, _"Of course. I'll be there, waiting for you. Don't stand me up, okay?"_

 _"I wouldn't dream of it."_ Only seconds left. She would make it, she told herself, if it meant clawing her way out of the ice, if it meant dying and coming back to life, if it meant being with him for one more minute. But there were no more minutes. And she was scared and she had only been scared a few times in her life when she should've been scared a hell of a lot more. _"Cassian–"_

The plane hit the ice and everything went black.

And here she is now, in a strange yet somehow familiar city, in a strange time yet same world, and there is nothing left for her to say or do. The clock ran out sixty years ago. He's not waiting at the dance hall for her. She wonders if he went out of a sense of duty, if he danced with anyone or just stood there in the corner as the end of the war was celebrated around him. She can see him doing that, standing stock still and only putting on a smile and raising his glass when people looked his way.

Jyn closes her eyes, putting away everything in this world, and latches onto the past in a vain hope. _Cassian,_ she thinks, but she's too late. She's always too late. She has never been one for being on time.


	2. Lost

**Author's Notes:** I'm a terrible person who forgets to update things on a daily basis even when it's been written for months. On the bright side, I have five more chapters of this already written.

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 _lost: adj.,_ _denoting something that has been taken away or cannot be recovered._

* * *

She dreams of him. She doesn't want to, but the dreams come anyways. It's not that he's gone that hurts her; it's that the years in between them are nothing to her. One second, she was saying his name, crashing the ship into the ice, and the next he is sixty years gone. It's not that she missed all those years with him; it's that he spent all those years without her. She could easily look him up, find his file, read of his life after her disappearance, but she's afraid of what she will find and angry that she's afraid.

And so she dreams of his hard-earned half smile, the admiration she slowly managed to draw out of him even before she'd been given the super soldier serum, the trust in his dark eyes that she'd never expected to want so much, the way he'd roughly tug his gloves on when he was angry, the sandpaper feel of his stubble when her lips had crashed against his just that one time and she could feel his need, his concern, his fears-

She wakes up gasping and sweating every time, unable to fall back asleep, and wanders to the gym to beat out her frustrations until she can sleep again.

It's three weeks in the little bubble the people who saved her are hiding her in - three weeks of "adjustment training" and catching up and acclimating to the new, very advanced world - when she finally works up the courage to ask someone about him.

"Cassian...Andor?" the tech responds. The poor guy is young, not much older than a kid, and probably wasn't expecting Jyn Erso of all people to swoop down on him and demand that he use his computer, but she's feeling itchy and dangerous and it's either channel her energy backwards or do something drastic, like break out of this place.

"Yes, I want you to look everything up on him," she tells him impatiently, hovering over him like a hawk. "He was probably one of the first S.H.I.E.L.D. members. I can't imagine he'd let an opportunity like this pass him up or they'd let a man of his talent go."

The tech guy looks nervous as he fidgets in his chair. "Ma'am, I-"

"C'mon now, I don't have all day," Jyn interrupts, which is a lie, because as an unofficial prisoner here (even though they insist that she is not, in fact, a prisoner), she has a lot of time of her hands, possibly all day.

Able to tell that she's running on a very short fuse, the tech does what he's told, turning back around and dutifully using the computer to find what she needs. It's amazing how fast he's able to produce all the information she has wanted so terribly and been dreading in just a matter of minutes. She wonders what the war would've been like with this kind of technology and is then grateful that it wasn't available. Enough destruction was caused by what they had then.

The file is barely finished printing by the time she snatches it and walks away without a single word. She doesn't wait until she reaches her bunk to dive in. It's surprisingly...small, measly compared to what she thought it would be. Cassian was a career soldier through and through. Even after her disappearance, she can't imagine that he would just leave everything behind. The military was his life.

Her heart nearly stops when she reaches the third and last page and she freezes in the middle of the hallway as she stares down at the last few lines. They're awfully short for what she considers to be one of the biggest losses in the war, not to mention her life.

M.I.A. just a few weeks before the war officially ended. Presumed killed. Declared death _in absentia_ approximately seven years later.

Jyn slumps against the wall and slides down until her knees are drawn against her chest. For the first time since she was a child, she feels very small. She clutches the papers so tightly in her hands that they crinkle. Much like her, he disappeared and everyone just...assumed that he was dead. She wonders if they searched for him as hard as everyone apparently searched for her or if, after a few weeks, he was just written off as an unfortunate, untimely casualty of war.

He never saw the end of the war. He never saw the fruition of all the hard work he put in, all the sacrifices he made, all that he ever dreamed of.

He was _gone_ , just like that, just like her, and she feels gone, floating somewhere else, back in the ice, back in the dark, and she wishes for a tiny moment that she still was, that she had never known this terrible truth.

Rage burns inside of her so viciously that it propels her to her feet. She storms through the hallways with only one destination in mind, kicking the door down without a pleasant knock. She's never been one for pleasantries anyways and she's tired - too tired - of this so-called protective bubble they're keeping her in. No, they're not hiding her in here; they're keeping her from going out there, from learning the truth.

"You knew!" Jyn exclaims, waving the papers around furiously. "You knew and didn't tell me!"

Director Mothma doesn't so much as blink, not even as other high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. members shy away from Jyn to the walls of the room, as if they are visibly repelled by the fury wafting from her. Instead, Mothma, so powerful in her white overcoat, stands up from behind her desk and regards Jyn coolly. "Yes, I knew."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jyn demands. "Why didn't you tell me that he'd-?"

"Because I knew it would hurt you," Mothma replies, "and regardless of what you think, I don't want you to be hurt. This is overwhelming as it is."

"Yeah, well, you can go screw yourself," Jyn snaps before throwing the papers in the air. They float harmlessly to the ground, but the other agents flinch anyways while Mothma remains composed as ever. "That's what I think."

Jyn turns on her heels and stomps out of the room. Damn Mothma, damn the woman and this agency, damn everything about it. Cassian would've flourished here; he would've been able to do so much good. Tears burn in Jyn's eyes and she angrily wipes them away. It has been a very long time since she cried. An ugly laugh escapes from her lips. Over sixty years, in fact. Cassian deserved the chance to fulfill his dreams. He deserved a _life_.

It's by the time she reaches her room that Jyn realizes why she's so devastated. A part of her hoped that he was still alive, stubbornly clinging to life in his old age, so that she could properly say goodbye. And that is gone as well. The dreams will never go away. The past slips through her fingers like sand and she feels displaced. Her story will go on, but his has been reduced to not even three full pages and it's not enough, not nearly enough, for a man and soldier like Cassian Andor. He's gone. She was too late yet again. Always late.


	3. Life

The mission is simple, just a protection detail. It's probably more for show than anything, considering who she is. Just another stage. She's done a dozen like this since being let out of her sandbox to play with others. They don't give her anything too dangerous because they know that she'll likely do something they won't like. These filler missions aren't that bad though. At least they're something and they keep her occupied. If she's busy with the job, with the future, then she can't think about the past.

Jyn quietly begins to rebuild a life outside of the job, though it's still a relatively empty one. She doesn't have a group of friends that she goes out with for drinks on down time. No hobbies outside of learning new weapons and tech and sparring to speak of. There aren't any photos hanging on the walls of her small apartment, no personal decorations to give away a personality, no potted plants to take care of, nothing to suggest that the place is anything more than somewhere to sleep and eat.

News on the television drones on in the background, like she's waiting to hear something that S.H.I.E.L.D. won't alert her to first. What, she isn't sure. It tires her to be honest, all the death and unrest that she can't fix, all the people she can't save in a country far away that her own doesn't seem to care about. She thinks about asking questions - demanding to be deployed - but there is no simple answer for these problems. It makes her wonder if her sacrifice did any good at all. There's always another war to be fought.

She's standing silently to the side of the stage, Shara's humored voice crackling in the earpiece as she wanders through the crowd. The senator's speech isn't the most radical thing out of this new era, but it's enough to cause some waves and apparently waves are dangerous these days. Jyn glances at her watch the check how much longer the speech is due to last. When she looks back up, a shiny reflection in the distance glares back at her from one of the adjacent buildings.

It could be nothing. Any other agent might've dismissed it as the sun shining against one of the windows, but Jyn gets rocked back to her time in the military. She remembers the all-too familiar glint coming from Cassian's sniper rifle, his weapon of choice, always letting her know that she wasn't alone even if it looked like it. And so she reacts like it is very much something.

Screaming out a warning would be foolish, so Jyn rattles off, "Sniper, blue building, twelfth floor, fourth window to the left," to alert Shara and the other agents stationed in the area as she rushes onto the stage. Before anyone or even the senator can say anything, Jyn hears a crack in the air and throws her shield up. The bullet smashes into the vibranium and falls to the ground, the vibrations rippling down her arm, but she grits her teeth and ignores it.

The senator gapes down at the bullet and whispers a horrified, "Oh my god," before Jyn shoves her off the stage and more obvious bullets begin to pepper around them. The crowd, now fully aware of what is going on, goes wild and breaks into utter chaos. Screaming drowns out the warning sounds of sniper fire as Jyn rolls off the stage and out of the line of sight. Her heart hasn't started racing yet.

Catching sight of three agents grouping around the senator while a black SUV speeds their way, Jyn snaps a hand at them. "Get the senator out of-" One agent topples over due to a precise bullet to the head and she whips around to see where it came from. Either there's multiple snipers or the one out there is exceptionally talented and is packing some serious high tech heat. "Shara, do you have a visual?"

"No!" Shara's voice is breathless, probably from running at full speed. "I-"

The line gets cut off and Jyn's blood goes cold. There aren't many people left alive in this new world that Jyn likes, much less cares about, but Shara is one of them.

"Shit," Jyn hisses and then turns back to the agents covering the senator. There isn't anymore sniper fire. Either they're dead, running, or otherwise engaged. "Get her out of here!"

Without looking back, Jyn takes off in the direction where she saw the sniper glare. She leaps onto the stage and then jumps off of it into the crowd. People push at her in a manic, unorganized, and fruitless attempt to escape the sights of a sniper, all of them doing excellent imitations of flailing targets, but Jyn shoves her way through them, not caring if she has to knock people out of her way. When she finally breaks free of the crowd, she jumps on top the hood of a car and runs over it before leaping onto an SUV where she leaps to grab the railing of a third floor balcony and jerks herself over the bars to land solidly on the concrete.

The couple safely watching the scene unfold from inside gawk at her and she gives them an awkward grin as she opens the sliding screen door. "Pardon me." She squeezes past them and bolts out of their apartment without looking back. Once she reaches the stairs, she takes them by two, her enhanced muscles singing at finally being used properly, her heart thumping in her chest, and her mind focused on reaching Shara, who is hopefully still alive to be giving the sniper hell.

At the twelfth floor, Jyn bursts through the door and catches sight of a body being thrown through a door and slamming into the adjacent wall in the hallway. Her breath hitches when she recognizes Shara's wild hair and signature jacket and she dashes towards her. When Jyn reaches the other woman, she's relieved to see that Shara is alive, battered and exhausted with some obvious difficulty breathing, but alive.

Still, this is no ordinary beating. Shara's particular skills include fighting using multiple techniques. For someone to take her down this badly, they would have to be equally or even more dangerous, something that Jyn honestly didn't think possible.

"I'm okay," Shara wheezes, "but the assassin-"

"I've got it."

When Jyn goes to stand up, Shara snatches her by the wrist and stares her in the eyes. "This isn't a normal assassin."

"Good thing I'm not a normal agent," Jyn responds before rising. She darts into the room just in time to catch a glimpse of a man leaping out of the window. Twelve stories up. Without a rope or means of slowing their fall. No kidding. Definitely not a normal assassin. Jyn follows without hesitation, launching herself over the balcony even though she hears Shara shouting in the background, and flies in the air. For a few seconds, it feels a lot like freedom and Jyn can actually breathe.

She lands on her toes on a building only five stories down, absorbing most of the shock, but it's still hard and she has to roll foward to recover and keep from injuring herself. She has to throw herself to the ground almost immediately to miss being shot and rolls behind a brick wall to gain some cover. Instinctively, she goes to reach for her gun, but then remembers that she doesn't have one. Captain America doesn't carry guns. Seems kind of ironic consider how gun crazy this damn country is. She had one during the war, even used a few Hydra guns on their own men.

Instead, all she has is her shield, which she trusts more than most people, and she spins around the corner and launches it as hard as she can at the assassin. It's light, but made of a metal that is stronger than any other metal known in existence. No one is capable of withstanding its impact except for her and that's only because she was modified and learned to make it an extension of herself. It's the last thing remaining from her old life to exist. In a way, it is her and she is it. No one else can compare to it.

And then the running assassin skids to a halt and catches the shield one-handed. She hears the unmistakable metal thud of vibranium impact, the sound ringing in her ears, as she stands wide out in the open and stares in shock and confusion at the sight. They connect eyes and she's overwhelmed by the strange mixture of intensity and blankness in his dark eyes not covered by the mask hiding most of his face. Half of her mind locks onto those eyes; the other half is too alarmed to think about it.

He caught it. The asshole caught her shield. That...isn't possible. It isn't right. It's hers. It's her . It feels strangely like a violation and a violent desire to get her shield back burns inside of her. She hasn't felt this furious since she found out that Cassian was dead and everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept it from her.

For the first time, Jyn doesn't think of her opponent as just another would-be assassin, but something far else. She doesn't know what to think except, Who the hell is this guy? Because he is not playing around. If he wasn't holding onto her shield like it was just a frisbee, she might've been impressed.

Without warning, he spins, just as she did, and launches it back. She catches it hard in her gut, unable and unwilling to dodge it, but the throw is so hard that it forces her to skid back a few feet. By the time she looks up, the assassin is gone, like a ghost, nothing but a memory, and her mind spins wildly at the implications. An impossible shooter, deadly in hand-to-hand combat, dropped five stories without concern, caught her damn shield. This is something new.

And a little part of her, a part that she tries very hard to hide, is excited **.**


	4. Longing

They call him the Winter Soldier.

Jyn finds the name in a file that is three-fourths marked out, surprised that the name managed to somehow exist through the scrub. After a week of hounding the same tech that helped her find Cassian's file, the man showed up at her room, looking skittish and decidedly uncomfortable while clinging to a laptop and a thumb drive, before she dragged him inside and out of sight. Apparently, he got in trouble for helping her out the last time, but despite that, he could not say no to the Jyn Erso.

She's never been one to abuse power, but her name meaning something is pretty helpful, if not a little irritating as well when she tries to remain anonymous.

"Is that all you could find?" she asks, her eyes locked onto the computer screen.

The tech, Bodhi, rubs his days-old scruff and admits, "That's all I could break into." So this information is above his clearance. He was forced to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s server, his own people, in order to get this to her.

Leaning back in her seat, Jyn can't help but wonder what else they're hiding and from who. Are they still trying to keep her in the dark? A fat lot that will do if she's forced to confront this assassin again. And she will. She can feel it in her gut. She needs to know who he is; she wants to know who she's up against. It isn't just a matter of her job; it's consuming her mind. Bodhi's good at what he does, but even he couldn't get everything.

"Did you…?" Bodhi clears his throat, avoiding the laptop as much as possible. It's obvious that he doesn't want to touch the thing anymore. It needs to be destroyed. "Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you." She as good as dismissed him, which he seems thankful for as he scrambles out of the room. A brave person, she thinks, and a smart one too if he knows to be wary of this search.

The Winter Soldier.

Her eyes drift to a picture of her and Cassian from the war that she has pinned on the wall. What would he think of all this espionage? He was better at it than her. She was made to burst into situations and blow things up while he worked so well behind the scenes. She admired him for that, even if she didn't understand it. Now she's trying to do what he was known for - sneaking, hiding, keeping secrets. Cassian was so devoted to the cause. He never would've questioned S.H.I.E.L.D until presented with evidence and he would've felt betrayed after and done whatever he could to put an end to it, even if it meant damning himself.

She closes her eyes and smiles faintly. She's fine with that. Jyn has been damned for a very long time.

"Someone hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s server last week and copied some old files," Director Mothma announces offhandedly as people file out of the debriefing. Another job well done, another clap on the back. Jyn doesn't care about that. Her mind lies on bigger fish. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Jyn barely raises an eyebrow and snorts derisively. "Because I'm the tech savviest person here."

"Well," Mothma replies, "you've been known to take files before."

It was Cassian's file. Jyn tries not to react, but her hands form into fists anyways. They should never have hid it from her in the first place. What good did it do them? Why are they so bent on keeping her in the dark? She knows that this is a spy organization, but to keep secrets from their own agents seems counter-productive.

"What were the files on?" Jyn asks, curious to see what she'll be told, if anything. She knows what the files were about; she had them found after all.

"Old missions concerning an old enemy operative," Mothma says lightly. "The last known mission was dated nearly twenty years ago. I doubt they're still in commission."

Oh, that operative is definitely still in commission and thriving. Shara's healing broken ribs can attest to that. Jyn can still feel the sting in her hands and gut from when he threw her shield back at her if she thinks about it hard enough. Mothma is dismissive, like she knows without asking that Jyn is involved and is telling her to stand down. Drop the hunt. Let it go.

But Jyn can't. She never could. It's not in her nature.

She lays down and thinks about those eyes - how they managed to look so dead and alive at the same time - how familiar they felt when laid upon her. She closes her eyes and sees him jumping out the window without a care and following after him even without knowing where to land. She has to wonder about a person that has the same disregard for their own life because of a mission as her. She pictures Shara getting thrown through a door and wonders how it would feel to fight someone on her level, to not have to hold back, to not restrain herself. Would she feel alive again and not just living?

Jyn shrugs her shoulders. "Doesn't seem like that big of a deal then."

"We take any breach of security very seriously, even small ones," Mothma points out.

"The serum they gave me turned into a super soldier, not a super spy," Jyn replies before she turns to walk out of the room. "That was Cassian's field of expertise."

It doesn't hurt to say his name aloud as much it used to, but it still stings. She imagines him standing stock still at the edge of the room as she walks out rudely, him closing his eyes the only sign that her behavior affects him. He would berate her later for being so insubordinate, especially to someone like Director Mothma, but then he would try to hide the smile that always formed after when she half-assed apologized.

She misses even that now. There's no one to temper her here. She's a loose canon. Shara does her best, but she's not enough. Cassian could cool Jyn's heat with a single look; a simple hand on her shoulder would get her to snap her mouth shut when she was about to tear into someone. Here, now, she's convincing once obedient techs into hacking into secure servers and steal files so she can probably go on a rogue mission.

Cassian would be aghast by her behavior - or maybe he would be by her side. Because no government agency should keep dangerous secrets like this from their own people when it only hurt them. Maybe he would follow her because it was the right thing to do. It wounds her to think of what he might say to her now, but it comforts her as well. She's fighting for the future, but his ghost will always be there. One day she'll join him.

Jyn almost laughs. Judging from all the kills attached to the Winter Soldier, confirmed and unconfirmed, maybe he'll help her get there.

* * *

Shara appears a day later in Jyn's room, already lounging on the bed when Jyn walks in after a session at the gym. Some might shy away, but she's too tired to deal with anything, so she peels off her sweaty shirt and tosses it into a hamper while Shara eyes her like a cat.

"Aren't you still on medical leave?" Jyn asks as she kicks off her shoes.

"I suppose, but there's no need to stay in the med bay the entire time," Shara replies. She stretches out as far as she can, only twinging in pain once from her broken ribs. "I missed a real bed."

"I don't think that's yours."

Shara grins all sharp-like. She's made of edges. Jyn wonders how she ended up that way, but she knows better than to ask "Not the cuddling type?"

"Get frozen like a popsicle for over half a century, you learn to appreciate space and not being confined," Jyn points out dryly. This causes Shara to laugh. Most people would probably be sensitive of her situation, but she learned to use dark humor to deflect and cope at a very young age when she was weak and parentless. It throws almost everyone off, but Shara delights in it.

"Can't blame a girl for trying," Shara sighs as she appreciatively eyes the small curves of Jyn's body and the muscles the serum gave her. There's nothing dirty in it though. Jyn knows that Shara is only being playful. She's seen the other woman in action behavior, making men's mouths slobber at the mere thought of her.

For a second, she wonders what it might feel like if that intensity is turned on her, but then she's only ever felt that way towards one other person before and he's dead. Best not make it two for two. Besides, Jyn really does prefer to sleep alone. That way she doesn't have to explain the nightmares.

"Heard about the breach in security," Shara says idly.

"They really should work on their firewall protection," Jyn says in return as she rummages in her drawer for a clean pair of shorts.

"Mothma knows it was you."

There's no need for a response, so Jyn says nothing. Denying it would be futile. She'll shoulder the blame if it means keeping Bodhi's name out of this. Instead she finds some shorts and shimmies out of her leggings, throwing them to the side as well. It doesn't bother her being only in her underwear and sports bra in front of Shara, just as it doesn't cause the other woman to blink. They've both seen more than a half naked woman's body. It would've been nice if her body could've been somewhat distracting right now, like Shara's, but she's all lean muscle and little to imagine.

"Why does this mean so much to you that you're willing the jeopardize your place here?" Shara asks, sitting up on the bed and swinging her legs over the side.

"Why are they trying to keep this a secret?"

Shara huffs. "He's a ghost, Jyn, for a lot of reasons. One, because half of the espionage community doesn't even believe he existed; and two, because if he did, he should be long dead by now."

"He's not dead and you know it," Jyn counters heatedly. She waves a hand at her. "Were your ribs broken by a ghost in spy folklore or a dead man?"

The impassive expression on Shara's face doesn't change. She's a spy and good at what she does - hiding, keeping secrets, not reacting. It occurs to Jyn that the other woman reminds her of Cassian and feels a spark of distrust. Had they been paired together because of Shara's skillset - because she might make Jyn think of Cassian and feel subconsciously placated? Shara is her closest friend these days, but was even that a ploy to coerce Jyn into cooperating with them?

It shouldn't hurt, but it does. Like that time when she thought that Cassian was involved with someone else.

"It was him," Jyn says quietly. "The Winter Soldier - I know it was him."

It's that unchanging look, the way Shara looks at her and doesn't blink, doesn't try to do something to change Jyn's mind, that lets her know that Shara is in agreement with her. It's a reply in of itself. Jyn has never been as good at reading people as someone like Cassian or Shara, but she knows how to read situations. That's part of being a good soldier, of staying alive. And for Shara, being a spy means that secrets are like currency to her, but she doesn't like it when they're kept from her by their own people.

"He's like me, isn't he?"

Shara sighs. "I don't know."

Jyn can't help it; she barks out a laugh. "He threw you through a wall , Shara. He jumped out of a twelve story window. He caught my shield . What normal human being is capable of things like that?" She's still affronted by the memory of the assassin catching her shield and throwing it back at her hard enough to make her skid backwards, like it was nothing. She thinks of the metal-on-metal sound, that familiar ping. Was his hand made of vibranium?

"But you know he's real," Jyn says. "You know he's alive."

"Yes."

"And you know Mothma is trying to keep me in the dark about it." Jyn folds her arms across her chest. Shara is the interrogator, but Jyn is the relentless one. She's a dog chasing a car. She's the fighter. It's been that way since she was born, weak and wiggling, everyone so ready to give up on her. "Why?"

"Probably because you're going to get yourself killed," Shara bites back, jumping to her feet. It's one of the first times that Jyn has seen Shara get angry. She hides her emotions so well normally, but it must've irritated her to have Jyn ignore all her little tricks and ploys to distract and derail. "You're an incredible asset that she doesn't want to lose, but you're also reckless and looking for a fight - except this isn't some regular brawl. The Winter Soldier is a mystery, but he's most definitely a murderer and he will kill you."

Jyn scoffs. Does everyone here have so little respect for her? Do they think her just a gimmick or maybe a relic of the war? Something to display like a trophy, only use for show like the shows they'd made her do before she had been allowed into combat? Maybe they thought she was washed up. She was from another time, not this new age with weapons beyond her wildest dreams and technology that was once science fiction to her.

Shara takes a breath and puts a hand on Jyn's shoulder. "I know you don't trust me all the time, but please, listen to me for once." It sounds like something Cassian said to her not longer after she'd been injected with the super soldier serum. Why? Is any of this real? "Yes, the Winter Soldier is real, alive, and very much active right now. I don't know how or why, but he is." She pauses, as if torn between whether to continue or not. "Another thing? You might be searching for him, but he's hunting you too and that's dangerous."

Maybe he felt the same answering call in her gaze as she saw in his. For the first time since she'd been pulled out of the ice, she didn't feel alone, but even more so, she didn't feel completely unknown. She didn't feel out of time, but right in the moment the second they faced off. Ever since then, this search for him through technology, the countless hours spent reviewing the little footage at the senator's speech that they had of him, she kept hearing that call resounding in her, demanding her to come and find him.

It's such a simple human want: to be known. She feels like she's been fighting for it her whole life yet is only given brief moments of it here and there to tempt her.

"Good," Jyn says, turning away to pick up a shirt and pull it over her head. "Maybe he can do the work for me."

Because the crash is inevitable. Their meeting again is inevitable. This time, she doesn't try to hide the excitement. It's far too late for that. It's in her bones.


	5. Lamentation

It turns out that Shara is right: the Winter Soldier finds Jyn before she can find him. The one thing he can't be counting on is how ready she is, how much she needs this.

She practically vibrates with energy the second he comes into her vision, a dark blur on the road in front of them. An almost ugly grin cuts across Jyn's face as she presses her foot down on the gas pedal, accelerating the SUV to a dangerous speed. Next to her, Shara sucks in a breath and presses herself back into the seat, her eyes glued on the figure ahead of them.

"Jyn," she says warningly, "you're mad."

Maybe she is, just a little, but she also hasn't felt this alive since she first crossed paths with him. This is someone on her level, someone that she won't have to hold back to fight, and she can't wait to feel that strength again. Jyn honestly felt like she was living just to live, little to no sense of purpose guiding her through her time working in S.H.I. ., but this means something to her. This is only something she can deal with. This was meant for her; he was meant for her to find.

It was easier to lure him out than expected. A ghost even in the spy world, Jyn knew that she would not be able to play at his game and find him. She wasn't a spy. That was always where Cassian stepped in. He taught her what he could during the small amount of time that they shared together, but it wasn't enough to find and capture a man even Shara couldn't compete with.

And so Jyn used what she had available: the woman that the Winter tried and failed to kill. It was the only time he ever failed to follow through a kill. She knew it would burn through him, just as it would her. Even with the warning bells going off in his head, he wouldn't be able to resist himself. He had to kill her - he _would_ kill her - and Jyn would be there to meet him.

"I can't believe you're using Senator Organa as bait for the most accomplished assassin in history," Shara proclaimed after the debriefing, shaking her head the whole time. Likely she couldn't believe that Organa agreed to it after only debating it for a few minutes.

"It's our only choice to lure him out in the open," was what Jyn said.

 _It's what Cassian would do,_ was what she thought.

Now that she's in a car barreling towards a man that is lifting a rifle in her direction, Jyn is doing things her way. Cassian would've berated her for such reckless behavior, but it's what made her who she is. She's good at coming up with plans, but most of those plans consist of her attacking this head on. For as long as she can remember, she has been a scrapper and ready to throw herself into a fight. Not even the super soldier serum could change that, no matter how much it changed her body.

The first bullet pierces the bullet proof windshield, but doesn't break it. If it had, the bullet would've gone straight through her head. She didn't even move, only gripped the wheel tighter. The second bullet hits a few inches to the left of the first, still not shattering it, but she knows that it's close to giving up.

Shara slams her hands down on the dashboard. "Jyn!"

The third bullet shatters the windshield, but she dodges out of the way at the last second. Her headrest now has a hole in it. She hasn't felt this alive since coming out of the ice. Before he can take another shot or Shara bolts, Jyn jerks on the emergency brake and slams the brake pedal, spinning the wheel hard to the right at the same time. It's a miracle the vehicle doesn't flip, only because she jerks the wheel back at the last second, so that they slide around the Winter Soldier instead of colliding with him.

For a brief moment - one that feels like a century, a lifetime, the single most important moment in her life - Jyn and the Winter Soldier are side-by-side, him standing coolly in the middle of the highway, her sitting in the SUV, watching him out of the driver side window. His eyes are cold and hard above the mask covering half his face, not a hint emotion, but she can't help but smile breathlessly. There's only a foot in between them. She could reach out and touch his face with her fingertips.

Instead, she points a gun at him, something Captain America isn't known for doing.

He doesn't dodge the gun, like she thought he would, but actually leaps forward and grasps hold of the vehicle, one hand gripping the edge of the window and the other _digging_ into the metal of the door, like he's attaching himself to its side. Shara pulls a gun, but he actually reaches into the car, across from her, and snatches it out of her hand. Jyn grabs his arm and slams it into the wheel, attempting to dislodge the weapon, but he holds onto it with an iron grip. Bullets lodge into the glove box and the passenger side window, shattering the glass, but none manage to graze Shara.

"Get out!" Jyn yells at her teammate, never once looking away from the Winter Soldier's fiercely intent face.

Shara grips the handle of her door tightly. "Jyn-"

"GO!"

She doesn't need telling twice. Taking one last glance at the power struggle and then whatever lies ahead of them on the street, Shara kicks the door open and rolls out, tumbling rough into the street. She'll be fine though. She's bailed out of faster cars. Once Shara is free, Jyn takes hold of the wheel again and jerks. This time, she doesn't move to correct it. The vehicle spins and then flips sideways into a barrel roll, taking the Winter Soldier down with it.

Her eyes never leave his.

 _They look familiar,_ is Jyn's last thought before the vehicle slams into the ground and she braces herself as it flips round and round uncontrollably.

Metal screams, sparks fly, glass breaks. This SUV was built specifically by S.H.I.E.L.D. to sustain serious damage and it does just that, but people weren't meant to be tossed around in a flipping vehicle like a towel in a dryer. Luckily, Jyn was also built to sustain serious damage. Even before the super soldier serum was injected into her frail body, she bent and she broke and she cracked, but she always came back for more, ready to fight even while she was bleeding. It's what makes her a good soldier now. It's not that she knows how to break; it's that she knows how to fix herself.

Once the vehicle finally comes to a stop, resting upside down and leaking smoke, Jyn dislodges herself. She kicks the door until it flies open and then crawls out, spotting the Winter Soldier pulling himself to his feet not far from her. He looks battered, a piece of glass sticking out of his arm, but doesn't even flinch when he pulls the glass out and throws it at her like a dagger, forcing her to duck. She spins out of the way right as he rushes towards her, slamming a knee into the side of the SUV where she once stood, denting the metal.

When she steps away from the vehicle, gathering herself into a fighting position, he turns around to face her. For a brief moment, neither of them move as they size one another up. Time stands still. Warning sirens and screams fade into nothing around them. Even the smoke seems to come to a stop. When he starts to move again, he steps around her like a lion circling its prey and her eyes follow his every step. She watches the way he breathes, his chest rising and falling steadily under his body armor, how his eyes latch onto her doggedly, wanting, needing, almost feral and desperate.

To be honest, she's somewhat taken aback to find that in his gaze. Maybe it wasn't so much of the Senator that dragged him out of the dark as it was Jyn herself.

She sees herself in him, but the reflection is twisted and awful. He's what she could've become if she was created in the wrong hands, guided by the wrong people. Cassian said she had a good heart - it was why she was selected over people more physically capable, less damaged - but in a different world, she could've become the Winter Soldier. That fight is in her blood.

Some people might try to talk him down. Jyn knows that it's pointless. Could anyone talk her out of fighting?

"Hesitant, are you?" Jyn taunts, unable to help herself. "Scared?"

She's never met someone that is at her level and she knows instinctively, judging from the way that he hounds her more carefully than what she read in old reports of his attacks, that he's never met his match either. Something flickers in his dark brown eyes, something she thinks she recognizes, if only for a moment, before it's gone, replaced by that cold anger again that she's come to associate with him. Excitement sings in her bones. Maybe she is mad.

He pulls a sharp, coal-like dagger out of a sheath at his side, gripping the handle like he might try to dig into her with it, and then he attacks. He's more graceful than most would've expected, but he's harsher than her. He bears down on her like an enraged animal, never letting up, forcing her back and to hop out of the way instead of countering. The knife becomes an extension of him; even when it leaves his grip to switch to his other hand, floating in the air for less than a second, it never seems to part from him. His movements are fluid and precise yet unpredictable as well.

Suddenly, he kicks her, full on in the chest, and she goes flying back into a car, damaging it just as bad as a car collision. She doesn't have time to think about it or feel guilty though, not when he's moving to stab her in the chest, so she rips the now flimsy car door off its hinges and uses it has a shield. The knife digs into the metal, but it doesn't pierce it completely. He goes to rip the make-shift shield away from her at the same time that she lunges for the knife.

Instead of pulling on his wrist though, she moves to wrap herself around his arm, jerking him down hard to the ground. Using her body weight and momentum, she rolls and slams him down, his arm trapped in between her legs, and pulls hard until he lets go out of the knife more out of reaction than pain. It only lasts for a second though before he reaches to grab at her, but she lets go and grabs his other wrist before it gets to her. The resistance of the metal that makes up this arm shocks her, but she uses her position and strength to her advantage, slamming it back against the concrete and scrambling over top of him.

She should kill him right now. Knock him unconscious. Strangle him. Anything to put him out of commission.

But she looks down at his face and she looks into his eyes and the need to know crowds out any other thought. It's a stupid one, the kind of thought that gets a person killed in action, but she doesn't care. This man, the Winter Soldier, is a ghost, and he's been haunting her dreams, awake and asleep, for weeks. Putting a face to him and maybe even a name will quiet her mind.

(There's also the thought that killing her mirror, her match, that makes her feel terribly alone and even scared. She doesn't want to be the only one again. She doesn't want to be unparalleled. She wants to be _known_.)

So she does something else instead: Jyn rips off the Winter Soldier's mask.

The face staring up at her nearly makes her scream, but she clamps it down in her chest, letting her horror seep into her blood, burying her fear and grief, until she feels nothing. She swears she feels nothing. Longing doesn't stir in her gut; desperation doesn't claw at her mind; need doesn't overwhelm her mind. But the sense of loss that she thought she was getting over comes roaring back like a siren in her ears until it feels like she can't hear or see anything but the man pinned underneath her.

"Cassian?" Jyn breathes, almost a whimper, almost a cry. She buries it, like she did everything else - her past, her life, her world, her love.

He has the same angular face, the same shadow on his jaw and cheeks that burned her skin, the same nose, the same lips that she remembers all too well. Now that she sees all of him, she doesn't know why she didn't see it before. His hair is a little longer, hanging limply on his head, but it's the same hair she marveled at when her fingers glided through it. Something more painful than a knife dug its way out of her chest and just as she felt when she found out he died before the war ended she feels like she's being torn apart from the inside out.

Dark eyes that she should've known on the spot gaze up at her. Instead of the coldness she thought made him up, confusion swarms in them. It's like he's heard the name before, but he doesn't know where. It's him. It's Cassian. How can he not know his own name when she goes to sleep with it on the tip of her tongue almost every night? She wants to scream, take him by the shoulders, shake him as hard as she can until he remembers.

 _It's you, I thought I lost you, I thought you were dead, you're alive, I'm alive, come back, come back-_

Without warning, he breaks free of her grip and clutches her throat with his cold, metal hand. He rolls them so that he's the one towering over her, dark and terrible, and she wiggles under him, devastation and fear and anger boiling inside of her. His hard stare pins her down almost as much as his weight, his thighs pressing into her sides painfully, and she might've laughed if she could breathe. How many times had she wanted him like this during the war? Hovering over her, touching her, wanting her.

And he does want her now, just not in the way she pictured then. He wants her like a predator wants its kill; he wants her like a man wants to rid himself of a nightmare, like she wanted to rid herself of the pain of losing him. It never went away. He never went away, even after he was long dead and gone, and it's just so ridiculous that he's here now, squeezing the life out of her, when she mourned him, when she gave her life to save his.

"Cassian," she gasps again, his name burning her. She paws at him, struggling for a grip, struggling to reach him, struggling to breathe. He flinches away from her when her fingertips touch his face without the intent to hurt him and his grip on her loosens for a second, just long enough to knock his hand away from her and toss him off. She rolls the side, scrambling to get to her feet, and he stays crouching, staring at her like he's only ever seen her in a dream, like he's not sure if she's real.

His voice is rough from disuse when he asks, "Who the hell is Cassian?"

Hearing his voice sends a violent shock through her, one that she could never anticipated. It's like being shot. If she were any weaker, she would've staggered to her knees. She wants to reach out to him tentatively, as if he's a wild animal that could bite her for trying to help him, but she stays very still, the pain of his question rolling over her in waves.

 _You are!_ her mind protests. _You're Cassian! You helped me, you saved me, you might have loved me!_

But if he doesn't even know who he is, then how the hell is going to know who she is?

She doesn't feel known anymore; she feels adrift, lost in the dark abyss of the icy ocean that became her tomb for decades, and she's lost.

Bullets ricochet around them, disrupting whatever magical spell they were both under. He actually uses his metal arm to shield himself. When Jyn glances up, she spots Shara rushing towards them, a machine gun in her hands, peppering away at him. Cassian growls like a feral animal, ready to pounce on her, but Jyn throws herself in between them and both of them stop.

"No!" Jyn screams, but she doesn't know if she's yelling at Shara or Cassian.

He's standing in front of her. Cassian is standing in front of her, alive and… What is he? Who is he? He doesn't even know. Does she still know him? Is there any part of the man she loved left in him?

Taking one last glance at her - and it's brimming with the sort of pained confusion that is filling up her soul - Cassian turns on his heels and runs away. Within seconds, he's out of sight and out of Shara's range. Once he's gone, something breaks in Jyn, like it was the only thing holding her together, and she falters against a truck.

Shara is on her in a flash, gun dropped to the ground, hands keeping her up. "Jyn, what the hell were you thinking? You just let him-"

"It was him," Jyn whispers hoarsely, eyes staring into nothing. Even with them open, all she can see is him. She closes her eyes, willing the image away, but it won't go away. If anything, he haunts her even more. His voice - she knew that voice, loved that voice, but it hurt her. He tried to kill her. He would have had Shara not intervened; Jyn isn't sure she could've stopped him right now. "It was him."

"What are you talking about? You're not making any sense."

Jyn's eyes snap open and she shoves Shara away. "It was him - it was _Cassian_." This time, when laughter bubbles up, she lets it come out, cold and mirthless, filled with rage. What did they do to him? Who did it to him? Her fists clench at her side and she almost turns to slam it into the truck, but barely holds herself back. She wants to break something, but the only thing she can think to break is herself.

Realization dawns on Shara as a horrified look crosses her face. "That can't be possible. He's dead."

Jyn rubs her face, hiding it from the world. "No, he's alive. He's the Winter Soldier."

And he tried to kill her. Wanted to kill her. She buries another scream in her hands.


End file.
